1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to wireless devices and access systems, and amongst other things to a dual frequency wireless LAN device and techniques for constructing the wireless LAN device.
2. Discussion of Background
Multi-band radios are available in a number of industries. In particular, the cell phone industry has utilized dual band and tri-band radios for a number of years. For example, Motorola's StarTac and Qualcomm's 2760 operate on at least two different frequency bands and/or formats.
Currently there are two particularly popular standards for wireless local area networking (“WLAN”): IEEE 802.11a and 802.11b. Devices compliant with the 802.11b standard operate in the 2.4 GHz band using direct sequence spread spectrum (“DSSS”) and complementary code keying (“CCK”) modulation. 802.11a operates in the 5 GHz band using orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (“OFDM”) modulation.
Currently, for wireless LAN, the only multi-frequency solutions require two completely separate transceivers derived from two completely separate chipsets. This increases the size and cost of the solution. In addition, some providers have announced plans to develop fully integrated one- or two-chip based systems in which both frequency bands and modes of operation are built in. However, since such integrated solutions require the development of completely new silicon for all modes of operation, the development of these chipsets is slow and expensive. In addition, if a manufacturer decides they want only single band operation, they must still pay for all the silicon area of a dual band approach if both frequency bands are implemented on one chip.